In The Prince of Tennessee, David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima explore in rich detail the forces that have shaped Al Gore’s life, and the ways that his past offers clues to what kind of president he would be. The Gore who comes to life in these pages is an intelligent and competent man, struggling with self-doubt and insecurity that explain his bureaucratic obsession with fact and his tendency to exaggerate his accomplishments.

Gore’s path to power, at first glance, seems straight and narrow. While Bill Clinton’s rise is a story of obstacles overcome, Gore’s ascendance seems the opposite: the son of political aristocracy reared by loving and demanding parents who groomed him as a princeling to reach the top. But his life was shaped by as much duality as Clinton’s. As a child Gore was shuffled back and forth from political Washington to rural Tennessee, his ancestral homeland. The contrast reflects a larger tension between what others expected of Gore and what he wanted to do. Here was the quintessential good son whom his classmates teased as the wooden Apollo. He would occasionally try to rebel but inevitably be yanked back by the burden of expectations and his own insecurity.

Download and start listening now!

at8w

Quotes & Awards

“A fine, deep-mine biography…The authors come closer to the core Gore than any other biographies to date.”

New York Times Book Review

“Grounded in strong reporting and honest perception. Sparkles with vignettes drawn from hundreds of interviews.”

Other Titles by David Maraniss:

About the Author

David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post. He is the winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and has been a Pulitzer finalist two other times for his journalism and again for They Marched Into Sunlight, a book about Vietnam and the sixties. The author also of bestselling works on Bill Clinton, Vince Lombardi, and Roberto Clemente, Maraniss is a fellow of the Society of American Historians. He and his wife, Linda, live in Washington, DC, and Madison, Wisconsin.

[ShoppingCartItemsAddedOnMerge] audiobook(s) were left in your cart from a previous visit, and saved to your account for your convenience. You may view or remove these audiobooks on the shopping cart page.